Chrissie Hynde is from Ohio and probably has the second-most famous song that name-checks the state, but why does her singing-pronunciation sound more like Nico than Kim Deal?

Norb, probably because she’s lived primarily in Europe since well before The Pretenders formed.

Torturous commute times and nosebleed-inducing taxes are the high prices locals pay for the cultural opportunities and corporate headquarters located there.

Yea, I was going to visit Chicago or New York this summer. Catch some theatre, eat some good food, you know… just enjoy some culture. But then I decided Wilmington Delaware was where I was going to go because of all the corporate headquarters located there. Should be fucking awesome right? Spend a night out on the town, catch some DuPont maybe some Citibank or a bit of Barclays PLC for that exotic foreign flavor I’ve heard so much about.

Alas!  We have three cats, but they just don’t get along.  I suppose the reason is that we gopt them al separately, and Kitten—no, we didn’t name her that—was already an adult when her previous owner kicked her out, and she doesn’t like other cats.

I’ve lived in Cleveland since 1985, and a lot of my local Twitter people are in public relations, so there was a lot of angst in my Twitter feed yesterday.

I did notice an interesting split though. The angry, freaking out people were those who’ve lived here all their lives. The ones who said eh, yeah, a lot of stuff here does suck—have spent significant time living elsewhere.

A lot of Cleveland people do need to get some perspective: not all local governments are this corrupt, not all local economies are this dismal, not all places are this dirty.

The most appalling thing about the Forbes article, though, is their itemization of three positives in Cleveland. One is the new downtown casino, and another is the $400MM+ “Medical Mart” that the taxpayers are covering all of as a gift to a close personal friend of outgoing County Commissioner Tim Hagan.

Hell, when a casino and a half-billion-dollar taxpayer ripoff are your bright spots, you are so screwed.

That’s a pretty excellent list: Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! was an excellent album. Up there with Abbatoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus, imo.

If you have cats that do this, you know what happened next.  Dusty rolled over to nibble Molly and the fight was on.

Also, this is nothing like my cats, as it appears to be daytime. My cats like to have battle of the kitty titans around 2am on my side of the bed. Fuckers.

Cleveland Rocks, by Ian Hunter.  Just sayin’ . . .

And of course, Cleveland has one of the world’s great symphony orchestras . . .

Yeah, Nick Cave just keeps getting better.  Cleaning up actually helps some artists, contrary to the stereotype.

Cleveland Rocks, by Ian Hunter.  Just sayin’ . . .

And of course, Cleveland has one of the world’s great symphony orchestras . . .

Many college classmates would chant “Cleveland sucks” instead…...though Cleveland in this case is used as a proxy for the Cleveland area…including the suburbs and rural town where our college is located. 

As for the city itself, it was almost regarded as a punchline to a bad joke whenever college admissions cites that our college was only 35 miles away from there…..without mentioning how we’d get there as public transportation is very spotty(Last bus to Cleveland leaves at around 5 pm on a weekday), only juniors and seniors were allowed to have cars in the town, and how with the exceptions of the Symphony Orchestra and the Rock’N'Roll museum, the city was a bleak landscape of decrepit abandoned buildings that were factories/facilities which shut down in the late 1970’s/early 1980s.  Did I also mention that law enforcement….including the state police can be overreactive jerks when they encounter college students from my undergrad…

Hopefully, things have gotten better since the 1990’s….but I won’t be convinced unless I see it….

I did notice an interesting split though. The angry, freaking out people were those who’ve lived here all their lives. The ones who said eh, yeah, a lot of stuff here does suck—have spent significant time living elsewhere.

My observations have pretty much been exactly the opposite. I enjoy living here and so does every other transplant I’ve ever met. In my experience it’s the natives- many of whom have indeed never lived anywhere else- who are always bitching and moaning.

Really, the place obviously has its problems, but Northeast Ohio is a good place to live- affordable, low-hassle, and with plenty of cultural and recreational opportunities, indoors and out. And I’ve lived plenty of other places to have a basis for comparison.

The worst place I’ve ever lived was New Haven, CT. I’m really amazed it wasn’t on that list. I currently live in the #3 spot on the list, and (aside form being in the middle of nowhere) it’s definitely a better city. In CT, everything was five times more expensive than it needed to be, everyone was rude, there was tons of crime, the rich/poor divide was huge (there were essentially two entirely different states within the same boundaries), and there were no counties, so every little town was practically run like the private fiefdom of whoever had managed to become mayor for life (while we lived there, at least five mayors were arrested for various combinations of fraud or sex trafficking). The only thing it had going for it was being about an hour and a half away from New York.

Best place? East Lansing, MI.

And honestly, who the fuck includes the success of the local sports team in a metric of best places to live?

Egnu—East Lansing has some pretty fucked up class politics, I’m afraid. Growing up there was no treat if you weren’t rich.

Ultimately, it is a good town overall, although culturally it went down a bit in the late 90’s when the students demanded homogeny and destroyed a lot of the independent businesses so that they could all drink Starbucks and wear GAP clothing. It’s going to take a while to rebuild that. But MSU is a beautiful campus, Espresso Royale is a good place to grab a coffee and hang out, El Az remains a great place to meet a bunch of friends for a cheap dinner, and FBC is a great place to grab cheap music. And if you’re a dork, you could do a lot worse than 21st Century.

Just don’t send your kids to school there.

Every single version of Jerry Garcia’s cover of Shelter from the Storm is better than any version Dylan ever sang.  Shelter from the Storm is a great song, but it’s among the top 10 of all time by Garcia.

Best song about Ohio—Bruce Springsteen’s Youngstown:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVXYzcb3r-w

I live in #15 and they’re right, the cost of living is pretty low.  We’ve also got a great library system (and it was a lot better before the state got all crazy with the budget cuts) and really nice public parks, plus, almost no commutes, as I can get anywhere in the city in under half an hour, even during peak traffic times.  And I’m only about a 5 hour drive to Chicago and Toronto, if I want big city cultural experiences.  However, city government is pretty corrupt, the weather sucks for 6 months out of the year, there is no public transportation, and jobs are pretty scarce at the moment.

But even so, it’s a pretty good place to live, except for the weather.  And even that is really nice during the summer.

I finally looked at the list- truly bizarre. Chicago and NY are more “miserable” than Gary, IN? WTF??

Where winter is concerned- the trick is to get into some fun winter activities like cross-country skiing. Then you can look forward to winter instead of dreading it!

Of course, the worst city is better than the best suburb. (Standard Talking Point #53)

Maybe I’m showing my age, but “Cleveland” by Randy Newman should be on the list.

Also, the Cleveland Art Museum is well worth visiting.

Mighty Ponygirl,

Honestly, “has a great record store” is one of my top qualifiers for a good place to live, and Flat Black and Circular was one of the best I’ve ever had access to. I only lived there for a year (‘94/‘95), and I moved there less than a week after graduating from college so I could finally live with my girlfriend, so my memories of it might be rosier than it deserved. Having grown up in Florida, I still thought actual seasons were amazing, and East Lansing (unlike Connecticut) actually knew how to prepare for winter and plow its roads. MSU was an amazingly beautiful campus, we got to drive to Detroit to see The Cure, and we found our beloved cat Glowworm there, so all-in-all good times. I recall the state at large being way more conservative, but East Lansing seemed like a little haven. Too bad to hear it’s gone downhill.

These lists are always designed to reinforce the belief that big, dense cities are bad. 

These lists are usually accompanied by a set of lists that portray moderate size, sprawly cities as good.

I’m kind of surprised they put KC on the list of “bad” cities - usually it gets great marks from these publications, especially since it’s “business-friendly”. 

Yeah, Detroit sucks, so does Rockford, and I’ve heard Modesto ain’t no peach.  And it should be a national embarrassment that Gary’s been rundown for as long as it has. 

Cleveland’s not a great city, but I’d rather be there than Atlanta or Pheonix or Houston or Dallas. 

But Miami? New York? Chicago? Philadelphia?  I don’t think so.  And, as a Chicagoan, this city is great.  Yeah, the mayor sucks and seems impossible to eject from office.  And there’s a lot of dysfunction in government, but its a damn good city. 

I’ll take it any day of the week over Forbes’ favorite suburbs and sprawl-tropolises.

Chicago supposedly has a high sales tax rate, but I believe food and clothes are exempt, and it’s income tax rate, which is 4.x%, is laughably low compared to NYC or DC. Plus the cost of living in Chicago is low. What’s their big complaint? That the Cubs can’t make it to the world series and that the Bears suck?

“Just don’t send your kids to school there.”

Provisionally “Hey! If it was good enough for two generations of my family, it’s good enough for your kids.” Unless you meant the K-12 schools rather than MSU, then, sorry.

Any discussion of East Lansing that doesn’t include Bell’s Greek Pizza is lacking.

I left in 2001 and it has been depressing on infrequent visits back to see all the crap taking over along Grand River. It is heart-warming that FBC survives while the Tower and Wherehouse outlets that were along there in the 1990s do not. Some things don’t change, though. Wife and I went up for Midnight Madness before basketball season and the Riv didn’t appear to have changed a bit since we left school. Changed their prices, though. And the hamster cage parking structure is still just as bizarre.

As I commented on a mailing list discussing politics:

Low taxes are considered, but schools, available medical services, and infrastructure are irrelevant?

I suspect Mogadishu is their perfect city.

I was specifically referring to the K-12 schools. MSU was perfectly acceptable, and had the added bonus of LCC nearby, which was an inexpensive way to get your required credits out of the way for cheaper if you were strapped for cash. I went to college elsewhere, but part of me sort of wishes I had the MSU college experience at times.

I’m fond of Bells, but not as fond as I am of El Az. If I go back to visit the fam and don’t make it to Bells, I can accept this. But if I don’t get my Enchiladas Jojoque… well, this has never happened, but I can only extrapolate that it would not be pretty.

I think FBC is still surviving because a) they get a lot of promo copies, b) students are always looking to sell stuff to make rent, and c) they are selling the CDs for less than the album downloads on iTunes or Amazon, making them the bargain choice for people who want to expand their collection.

Of course, I remember when El Az was in a basement. And when we had Jocundry’s which was an ass-kicking independent bookstore. *shakes cane at kids on lawn*

My sister actually had an apartment in Cedar Village. Being a townie, she knew better than to have a ground floor apartment, and to park her car someplace else during playoffs.

And when we had Jocundry’s which was an ass-kicking independent bookstore.

Was that the one where Moe the Cat lived? Every bookstore should have a cat.

Are you thinking of Curious? I don’t know that Joc’s had a cat (of course, that was so long ago, I can’t really remember). They started out in a space on MAC, then they moved into a large new space on Grand River next to Peanut Barrel, then B&N;and Schulers came in and drove them out of business (well, that and losing their most of their management in a plane crash). They would have Saturday morning story hour for kids so that parents could shop while the kids were watched. Moe the Cat sounds more like a Curious Book Shop thing.

Where winter is concerned- the trick is to get into some fun winter activities like cross-country skiing. Then you can look forward to winter instead of dreading it!

I’m sorry, Steve, but our brief moment of agreement is over.  Chicago winters are fucking miserable and I got the hell out and moved to sunny California the instant I could.

What broke me was the winter they canceled school because it was too cold to go outside.  It was 40 below by thermometer, but with the wind chill it was frickin’ 70 below.  No amount of cross-country skiing—which I really did enjoy and was surprisingly good at—could make up for that.

Chicago? Awesome. NYC? Awesome. Philly? Awesome.

Kansas City really deserves a qualifier: KCK is a complete shithole, KCMO is not bad at all.

FWIW I think Los Angeles is pretty miserable and so is St. Louis.

After my wife finished her PHD we were looking at prospective places to live/work and preferred the Great Lakes/Northeastern/Midwest states over the South and West. This list is ridiculous.

Jesus, this is bringing back sooo many memories. You’re right. I think it was Curious, although from looking it up on Google maps, they’re not where I remember them being. Man, Grand River looks sad. At least the area around In Flight (used to sell great bootlegs back in the days before internet downloading) and FBC still looks relatively the same.

I’m sorry, Steve, but our brief moment of agreement is over.  Chicago winters are fucking miserable and I got the hell out and moved to sunny California the instant I could.

It sure is over! I spent nearly 6 years in Chicago as a grad student, loved it then and still do- I visit as often as I can (helps that I have a sister there) and it always feels like home.  I would gladly live there if I made enough money to have a nice place in a good neighborhood in the city (i.e., not in this life…).

And if I lived in California I’d want to be in the not-so-sunny Bay Area (where I’d need even more money!)

Oooh, oooh! Sufjan Stevens, anyone?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b0fdETmRng

I would think that ‘My city is gone’ by the Pretenders (I assume this is what norb was talking about) would be the most appropriate song. It’s by a native of Ohio (Chrissie Hynde went to Kent State at the same time some of DEVOs members did—I wonder if they knew each other), it’s about Ohio (in fact, it’s mostly about Akron which is on the list), and it talks about how cities were destroyed and how urban sprawl ruined the countryside.

I have to agree that any list that puts NY City in the bottom is messed up. NY City has more culture than any city in the US (and in general more to do), has more services than any other city, is more convenient (especially if you don’t have a car), is one of the safest cities, ... It does have its problems, but the benefits easily outweigh them (so taxes are high, but there’s a 24 hour very good transportation system and a very good park system and ...).

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I love to visit Chicago and all of our various family members there.  In the summer.  But I would never, ever live there again unless I absolutely had to.

It does have its problems, but the benefits easily outweigh them (so taxes are high, but there’s a 24 hour very good transportation system and a very good park system and ...).

It’s funny, I was having a discussion with my nutty right-wing dad who was saying simultaneously that I was a fool to be living in my high-tax area and how I should move to his low-tax paradise in Arizona and how his disabled friend having a hard time getting around because public transportation in the Phoenix suburbs is so poor.  I pointed out that there’s a reason people live in high-tax areas—they want services.  If they don’t want services, they can go live in a low-tax area, but they don’t get to then complain that they don’t have as many services as they did when they lived in a high-tax area.  You get what you pay for.

He actually had to agree with me for once. 

Espresso Royale is a good place to grab a coffee and hang out

But that’s a chain too, if not as pervasive as *$, obviously. There used to be one in Sanna Crooz, even.

In Illinois, food and prescriptions are taxed at a lower rate, but they are still subject to sales tax. Soft drinks and alcohol are taxed at the normal rate, as is clothing. Combining state, ciounty, and city taxes, Chicago has the highest sales tax in the country

Well, East Lansing used to have several nice coffee shops. I myself preferred Cafe V. in my heyday, but there was also Cafe Latte. Both are gone. We still have Espresso Royale and Bigby’s (formerly the rather unfortunately named “Beaners”), which is also pretty ubiquitous in that region.

I went to college elsewhere, but part of me sort of wishes I had the MSU college experience at times.

Had an older cousin who attended and graduated from MSU in the mid-late 1980s.  She also pledged into one of the sororities and came from a well-off branch of my extended family.  What aspects of MSU appealed to you to wish for that experience?

I’m another transplant living in Cleveland, and like Steve LaBonne at #16 I’ve found it’s a pretty nice place to live.

Cleveland presents an interesting contrast to Baltimore, where I lived in the early-mid 90’s. Both cities have similar problems (although crime-wise Baltimore is somewhat worse), but Baltimorians (Baltimorites?) are a fiercely proud bunch. On the other hand, no one is more ready to tell you how much Cleveland sucks than a native Clevelander.

It’s totally a matter of taste, but I moved to Chicago 20 years ago from Memphis.  I’m still haunted by the August day I was stuck in a traffic in Memphis in an ancient station wagon with red vinyl interior and no air conditioning and the air so humid it felt like you were sitting in the inside of someone’s mouth.  I’ll take -10 over 110 any day of the week.  The winters are rough here, but I don’t mind ‘em.  There are too many cozy bars to take refuge in.  Hmmm - i wonder if all the bars factored into the plus or minus side vis a vis Chicago’s miserableness.

exholt—mostly it’s the size and beauty of the campus, and the easy-going nature of the people who went there. Going to school where I did, there wasn’t a lot of that, and I wonder if I might have been happier at MSU. But hindsight is 20/20, and it’s not easy to tease apart genuine experience from the feeling that you can’t go home again, so maybe if you’d never left you wouldn’t have had the door locked on you in the first place.

Growing up, I remember the stories about the gang rapes in the fraternity houses that the police just winked and nodded over. I remember dealing with the conservatives who surrounded the town and the short-sighted policies of the town council. So it’s not really rose-colored glasses, it’s just an appreciation of the positives.

Staying in the area wouldn’t have prevented the changes: they still would have turned the lights on in Petes and made it a non-smoking establishment, they still would have demolished the old Jacobson’s building and built condos, they still would have stripped up Grand River and shipped all the college students out to Hip Town in Bath. But my husband stayed in the area after high school and lived through all of that and because he wasn’t experiencing it all at once it wasn’t a big deal for him. Now that we both live in another area, he notices the changes more acutely. It’s just life.

“Was that the one where Moe the Cat lived? Every bookstore should have a cat.”

Kazoo Books in Kalamazoo has an excellent cat.

http://www.kazoobooks.com/about_us/about_us.htm

At least the Clarendon Ave. store, where the orange and white fluffy monster lives. It’s about as imperious as Queen Victoria and my guess is that it stretches across a chair better.

I can’t vouch for the Parkview location’s cat. YCMMV.

The Rust Belt town that’s surprisingly pleasant is Pittsburgh. I wonder what their secret is.

James:I suspect Mogadishu is their perfect city.

Mogadishu hasn’t had a winning season in forever, though.

My personal take on the taxes here in Chicago is that with the rate we have, we shouldn’t have to, oh, cut back on pretty much every bus/train line in the city, especially since the parking meters were just privatized for the next 75 years.  If that money were put directly into the CTA’s budget (of which Chicago only pays $6 million per year), I wouldn’t mind so much, but it’s essentially another Daley slush fund.

Unfortunately, this means Republicans are getting people to listen to them more with their “all taxes are bad” garbage, and things like this red light camera protest nonsense (“it’s just a way for the government to take more money from you!”  You mean when you do something incredibly illegal and dangerous?  Damn straight!*)

* At the same time, I came across this Chicago Tribune letter, so there’s still some people here that are sane.

Re sports teams:  Perhaps an alternate title for this thread should be “The Last Temptation of LeBron”

The Rust Belt town that’s surprisingly pleasant is Pittsburgh.

Them’s fightin’ words!

Seriously, I like Pittsburgh too. I don’t think they have a “secret”- it’s not like it’s the only the only underrated city. But hills and a riverfront don’t hurt (see also: Cincinnati). (I wish Cleveland made better use of its lakefront the way Chicago and Milwaukee do- it’s one of our major areas of underperformance.)

My personal take on the taxes here in Chicago is that with the rate we have, we shouldn’t have to, oh, cut back on pretty much every bus/train line in the city, especially since the parking meters were just privatized for the next 75 years.

That’s always the problem.  If people bitch about taxes and you can say, “But look at all of the cool stuff we have because of it!” they’ll usually mumble and stop.  If people bitch about taxes because your city/county/state actually is wasting taxpayer money, then I feel like slapping the city/county/state upside the head, too.

Here in LA, no one complained when the county (or state, I forget which) promised big bonuses to the construction company that re-built the 10 freeway for finishing early.  We were willing to pay that extra money to get something tangible—being able to use the freeway again after the Northridge earthquake.

It’s when you feel like you’re throwing your money down a bottomless pit that people get pissed off.  Oddly, this is one of the reasons I like my small city (small city engulfed by LA, but still our own city).  We are taxed fairly high, but I can see the visible results all over the place, from street repairs to longer library hours to ridiculously cheap buses (seriously, it’s 25 cents to travel around the city!)  If I was paying these taxes and getting nothing, I’d be pretty pissed.

Mnem:  It’s also that I have to always check myself when I think about the situation here, because a lot of the “we’re paying all these taxes and getting nothing” talk is usually from the Right, and doesn’t consider anything short of a check directly to them as “getting something”.

One exception:  Snow removal.  Do not mess with our snow removal.  Ever.  Of course, that’s a direct effect of car culture in Chicago, which is a result of lower density anywhere a mile West of the lake, etc., etc.

Arrgh, I suspect the MIA song is good, but the sampling classics in the background of a rap song always leaves me scratching my brain trying to figure out where the sampled track is from and distracted from the actual song. And tormented because it’s right on the tip of my tongue.

Ah, Clash’s “Straight to Hell”. O.k. let me give it another shot.

Seriously, does anybody else do that or is that just me being weird?

this red light camera protest nonsense (“it’s just a way for the government to take more money from you!” You mean when you do something incredibly illegal and dangerous?

it’s often the cities that do something incredibly dangerous, by shortening the yellow phase of lights to enhance revenue. When you approach a light that goes from green to yellow, you must decide if you can safely stop or safely proceed through the intersection. Short yellow times mean you’re either going to get a ticket, or get rear-ended.

http://www.shortyellowlights.com/standards/

Chicago’s red light cameras were installed by an Australian company, Redflex, in exchange for a share of the ticket revenues.

Cerberus:  I’m hoping more people listen to “Straight To Hell” via the MIA sample.

Hector B:  Interesting.  And by “Interesting”, I mean devoid of factual evidence.  All the “papers” cited in that link are to something called the National Motorists Foundation.  I don’t have time to look at it further at the moment, but it seems rather sketchy that the claims of how the cameras don’t really help are all coming from a group that advocates for the people most inconvenienced by them.

Oh, and if you want to know when the light’s about to turn yellow, you can check the pedestrian signs and notice when they’re flashing red (or even better, counting down; those signs rock).  You know, pedestrians?  The people who are most in danger when you run a red light?

Here’s another transplant to Cleveland who likes it just fine. There is certainly plenty about the town that could be improved, mostly well documented by previous posters (double amen regarding the waterfront, Steve LaBonne), but there are some fantastic resources too. As a cyclist, I take great advantage of the metropark system. The Emerald Necklace is a series of parks, that allow for long distance cycling in pleasant surroundings either on the road or on all-purpose trails. Then there’s Towpath Trail that follows the route of the old Ohio and Erie canal. And these resources are easily accessible from the city proper and the old line suburbs, not stuck way out in the boonies.

Native residents really do seem to have a chip on their shoulder about the place, and will always be the first to criticize it.  But yet, here they remain. Strange.

Seriously, does anybody else do that or is that just me being weird?

Cerberus, you’re definitely not the only one who does it. I’ve been picking apart “Paul’s Boutique” for years.

Having lived in both E. Lansing and Ann Arbor, I have to say that Ann Arbor is much better—Ann Arbor had all the nice things E. Lansing did, only 2 or 3 times more of them.  Jocundry’s was a good book store, true, but it wasn’t quite as good as the little independent store I used to go to in Ann Arbor—I wonder what happened to it?  It was named “Borders” . . .

And I guess I’m showing my age, there . . .

The people who are most in danger when you run a red light?

Where I live the people in danger from red light runners are cars on the cross street that have gotten the green left turn arrow. Pedestrians are most in danger here from people turning right on a green light at the same time the peds get the walk signal.

Pedestrian signals are designed to be seen, and obeyed, by pedestrians and not cars. And most in my area are always red—and thus provide no information—unless a ped has pushed a button to activate them.

Hector B: I can do you one better on the green arrow issue, in Philadelphia, they had recently re-worked this horrible intersection at 38th/University and Baltimore Ave to make it somehow MORE HORRIBLE but UPenn was able to get a new building out of it so huzzah to that I suppose. Anyhow, they had installed those “chirpers” for the visually impaired so they could know when it was safe to cross the street, but they had done *just what you described*, where the audible signal was indicating to the blind person “hey, it’s safe to cross the street now!” whereas the psychotic philly driver fresh off of I76 and trying to figure out this completely obnoxious intersection was being told “Hey! You can turn left now!” right through the pedestrian walkway. So it sort of compounded the problem.

MPG: Eek!

We have a couple beeping intersections where I live, and our dog has figured them out. The problem is that we are hard pressed to keep him from crossing when some one is making a right turn in front of us.

Pedestrian signals are designed to be seen, and obeyed, by pedestrians and not cars. And most in my area are always red—and thus provide no information—unless a ped has pushed a button to activate them.

In other words, your area considers people without cars an afterthought, which is the difference I was seeking to highlight.

I remain convinced that this is nothing more than an attempt by people with a modicum of power and money to avoid responsibility for their actions.  I’ve even been caught a couple of times by the camera, and it’s never occured to me that I was a victim of injustice because I was shown a photograph of me in the act of violating the law.  It’s difficult for me to feel wronged in that case, though I suppose it helps that I only started driving when I was about 30, and therefore don’t consider it a god-given right.  I suspect that sense of entitlement, wrapped up in the same old “the guvment is taking my moneh!” resentment is a huge part of the problem.  We may, in fact, be witnessing Nixonland 2.0.

I was shown a photograph of me in the act of violating the law.  It’s difficult for me to feel wronged in that case,

Hey if you were treated fairly you must have been guilty, and you’re speaking with the fervor of a reformed miscreant.  But I have to wonder about the fairness of a system where a foreign company is eager to install red light cameras free of charge figuring they will make it up in their share of the fine revenues. I mean, I support capitalism as much as the next guy. But Redflex’s self-interest does not coincide with mine.

I’m surprised they deigned to notice Rockford, especially since we don’t have any major league sports teams. I can’t help but wonder what was Forbes’ agenda with the cities they included.

Awesome DEVO tune!

62-

You’d almost expect it to be. Kent State was personal for Devo. Being there and witnessing it birthed their nihilistic view of humanity and the very philosophy behind their band and their music. Any song in tribute to that would thus be expected to focus a lot of care on it.

And you add that to a song that was already brilliant and caustic and also note that Devo are really good at covers and it’d be pretty much shocking if it turned out crap.

Native Clevelander here.

Actually, what I’ve heard most recently about Cleveland from someone is that “It’s so boring! There’s nothing to do there!” I have to admit this confused me a bit. There’s plenty of parks and museums… but then again this was a guy so perhaps he doesn’t like those sorts of things. :p

I would also agree the people that complain most about Cleveland are from Cleveland. I suppose some of us figure if our city isn’t great, we can at least hope to fail well so that we can get on the top of lists such as these.

Even so, I don’t see myself living anywhere else. Not many people get to live near a great lake, and I feel that if you want to do something you can find something to do, you know?

Having lived in medium-sized cities from age 18 through 49, I finally realized just how much better life is in a small town like the one in which I grew up.  So now I’m in cozy, Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, population under 5,000, with friendly neighbors, safe streets and few worries.

Randy Newman’s “Burn On” is the best song about Cleveland. No contest.